


Read Label Carefully Before Taking

by ThatwasJustaDream



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Community: 1_million_words, M/M, Pre-Slash, Truth Serum, gently sprinkled with crack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-30
Updated: 2015-11-30
Packaged: 2018-05-04 03:15:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5318354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatwasJustaDream/pseuds/ThatwasJustaDream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A bit of crackish fic: Castiel takes a potion meaning to help them all. But every time Cas does anything meaning to help them all? Well, we know how that goes.</p><p>Rated M for innuendo, mild banter of a sexy nature and some light cursing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Read Label Carefully Before Taking

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kaige68](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaige68/gifts).



> Reward fic for Kaige68 for finishing a weekend challenge prompt. Her prompt back to me was 'I was told there would be no side effects..."

It didn’t help that Sam and Dean had spent most of today celebrating a rare break from the chaos that made up their lives: As in watching football and drinking beer.

They seemed, perhaps, to be having a hard time fully grasping the situation he’d dropped in their laps when he fell back into the bunker. ‘I may be on my own, here,’ Castiel thought. ‘As in…. well and thoroughly screwed.’

His internal monologue? It was calm and resigned to his fate. But externally, words were pouring out of him – entirely against his will, at a mile per minute. 

Honest words. Blunt ones. Borderline ugly, some of them.

“When I used to leave you?” Castiel felt himself blurting, now. “It wasn’t to see the world or visit my favorite heavens; it was… to get away from you two…”

“I know, buddy. It’s all right, I get it; we can be a couple of pains in the ass,” Dean was trying, at least, to be supportive; was leaning with elbow on the library table, chin in one palm – his other long arm reaching to pat Cas’ shoulder where Cas sat slumped at the head. “I can see how anybody would need a breather now and again….”

“Not a _breather_ , Dean. I was going to _ghost_ you.”

“Ghost us?” Dean looked alarmed at the choice of words.

“It’s …what the kids… say…I think…” Cas said, the serum giving him a splendid moment of peace and control over his own tongue. “Ghosting is a gradual disappearing from someone’s life without explaining you don’t want to be around them any more.”

“Oh,” Dean sat back, blinking woozily. “Geez….Cas. That’s….wow.”

“And it _wasn’t_ because you are... pains; you’re not. Not to me, anyway, you’re not. Ever. It’s because...”

“Sammy, any luck?” Dean growled the question, low and tense.

“Oh… right. Remedy. I’m supposed to be searching for a remedy. Sorry…” Sam sat up taller across from Dean, taking another swig at his latest beer. “I kinda spaced out. Found an interesting article on….”

“…it’s because I’m very conflicted. Dean. That’s why I kept leaving you; because…”

“Aw, c’mon, Cas, there’s no need to get into …this. Can’t you rein it in? Or maybe at least direct the verbal tide in a new direction?”

“No. I can’t. Believe me, I would if I could. It’s like the serum is forcing words from my brain to my tongue and I have nearly no control. I’m … _so_ sorry…”

“It’s okay, Castiel,” Sam said, but he did look to be redoubling his halfhearted efforts to find info on the stuff Cas had imbibed. “I like you fine without a filter.”

“You may not … if you don’t find a solution…. soon,” Castiel warned. “Oh…this …is _awful_. And so unfair: I was told there would be no side effects.”

“Well, buddy, you drank a truth serum,” Dean shrugged in a ‘what did you expect’ kind of way. “Technically it’s not a side effect. It’s an effect.”

“It would be more accurate, then, to say I misunderstood the nature of the substance,” Cas could feel himself heaving with the discomfort; the physical struggle to get out the words he actually wished to speak. “I thought..oh _hhhh_ hhh, Dean, I ….. _gaaaah_ ….I thought…”

“Yeah, I know; you thought the serum would help you see the truth in any given situation and that it would be a valuable tool to have. You didn’t think it’d make you speak the truth. Let alone until everybody else’s ears fall off.”

“Maybe it’s his angel wiring,” Sam hit enter on his latest search attempt. “Maybe, once Castiel starts talking, really _talking_ … there is no off switch.”

“How about we not surrender to the worst case scenario just yet?” Dean asked, getting up and heading for the fridge. “For every serum there’s an antidote. Right?”

“You don’t need any more beer,” Castiel told Dean. “You’re each at least four bottles past needing another beer tonight. Your drinking is out of hand most days, and even ….more … _absurdly nihilistic_ …uunn _nngggg_ gggh…..today….ohhhhh…. sorry.”

“Well thank you, _auntie_ ,” Dean kept going, his hand on the fridge door. “Maybe you should have a few, too? With any luck they’ll combine with that crap you downed and knock your angel ass the hell out.”

“Sometimes when we are on a case and you’re talking to me,” Castiel turned in his seat to face where Dean was standing. “I don’t hear what you’re saying, because I’m distracted by impure thoughts. I’m watching your mouth as you speak, and…”

“Yes!” Sam slapped the table, hard, and raised his beer. “Go Cas, go! _That’s_ the stuff. There’s some truth, for once. I _knew_ it!”

Dean began banging his head against the fridge door repeatedly. Not lightly. 

Sam started cackling.

“I want you to _do_ things to me,” Castiel continued, or rather the serum did. “…and I want to do things to you, that… well, that Balthazar used to prattle on and on about in tales of his infernal, decadent orgies. I never _got_ it, then; I never understood the obsession with fornication, Dean, but now…I _do_. There are so many…filthy…. _wonderful_ things I want to do to you…”

“Jesus and Barbie on a birthday cake, Cas, _shut_ it,” Dean barked, walking back with two beers and slamming one down by Sam. “Just…. stop, or I’m not gonna have a choice; going to have to gag you ‘til….”

“Oh _hhhh_ hh,” Castiel purred, voice low and heavy, blue eyes rolling back in his head. “Would you….do that? Please?”

Sam went into a paroxysm of laughter so strong he couldn’t even keyboard; he had to push the computer away, fighting for air.

Dean sat down and slammed his own beer bottle against the table, too, eyes darting murderously between the two of them like he couldn’t decide which one he hated more.

“Sammy….” He finally said. “If you don’t find something soon I’m gonna blow a vein in my head, I swear.”

“I’m trying, I am. But… I don’t see how I benefit by ending this,” Sam said, fingers now flying over the keyboard. “Do you? See how I benefit from ending this?”

“Sam, you need a haircut,” Castiel intoned, an edge of something in his voice that suggested it should be obvious, pitifully obvious, so why the hell did he even have to say this out loud to him? “You need a ….styling…. delivered by someone who knows what they’re doing. Cutting it yourself is not working for you. It may, in fact, be why you barely ever get laid, lately…..”

“Ha!” Dean nearly stood up, shoving an index finger at Sam. “There! Keep on going, Cas – c’mon baby…show him what you got!”

“And Sam; it’s also…not okay to keep falling back into the same …cluster-fuck of a…relationship with Dean… even though you know better now,” Castiel said, the words rolling like a river but his expression, he hoped, conveying he was so….so very sorry for them. “It’s called _co-dependent_ for a reason, isn’t it?”

The silence was resounding: Dean staring at Cas, Sam staring at Dean.

And then Sam started laughing again, sliding half way down in his seat, losing it so hard he appeared in danger of urinating on himself.

“That’s it,” Dean was a blur headed for the door. “I’m taking a walk before I start banging heads together.”

“Dean, noooo….” Castiel regained control of his tongue long enough to call out. “I _need you_!”

“That’s what _he_ said,” Sam got out between gasps.

Castiel, even, couldn’t resist a long, rolling, and desperate chuckle at that.

He laughed and laughed and….fell out of his chair. Then he passed out.

~*~

Chicken noodle soup. And warm bread. Are there any two smells more distinctive?

Whatever he was, now - half angel, part human? Castiel didn’t need, technically, to eat very much. But certain foods really did it for him and those were two of them.

“Hey,” Dean’s voice in his ear as Cas sat blearily up on the library sofa; Dean sliding a tray onto his lap with the soup and bread and a big glass of water. A spoon, nearby, and two paper towels. “Got slow at it, okay? No downing it in one gulp; the soup’s hot.”

Castiel _did_ want to suck it all down like oxygen, but he nodded and dipped the spoon into the soup and resisted the urge to devour it.

Why did his vessel feel as if he’d swallowed a box of salt? 

The serum. A serum. Some sort of…serum. He’d taken. One. Why?

The recollection was there, then it was gone.

“Thank you,” Castiel said between bites. “This is… so good.”

“What do you remember?” Dean asked, and there it was again; something politely knocking on the inside of his brain, asking for Cas’ attention.

Something he should remember… doing. Saying. To Dean. To them both.

“We were on a case and then…it was completed. After…you two left to return here and I said …I’d join you in a bit and then…. I did. That’s all. There’s something. I know there’s something else, but that’s all I remember.”

“That’s fine,” Dean said, a hint of ‘don’t you worry your pretty head about it’ in his voice. “Just take it easy, okay? Eat and get some more rest, maybe. And ….Cas?”

“Yes, Dean?” He’d asked, lulled by the noodles and carrots; by the butter melting so beautifully on the piece of bread in his hand. “What?”

“I’m not much into gags, but if you want me to tie you to the headboard? I’m all in for that.”

With a wink, Dean was gone and…. 

Castiel was never sure how he managed to finish that meal, sitting on the sofa with the floor falling out from under him. 

They were seven of the longer minutes of his existence, but he ate every bite and drank the water before he got up to go find Dean because….he’d be needing his strength.


End file.
